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7. Texts of Analogy

AIda Rossi, Cemetery of San Cataldo, 1971-78

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In 1945, just after the end of World War II, Georges Bataille published a book titled Le Bleu du Ciel; which translates as "the blue of the sky," yet curiously enough was published in English as The Blue of Noon. The book was actually written in May of 1935. Its plot, set during the general strike in Spain and rise of Nazism, is a metaphor for the hope le sness of the left's ideology in the face of the oncoming world war, with necrophilia as one of its central metaphors. It is therefore not without some relevance that AIda Rossi's competition project for the Cemetery of San Cataldo in Modena was entered under the title "The Blue of the Sky." Its ossuary is an empty walled cube reminiscent of the stark geometries of a De Chirico painting or those of Ernesto Lapadula's Palazzo della Civilta Italiana at the Esposizione Universale di Roma planned for 1942. Rossi's project is also a metaphor for the futility of redemption in the anctuary; instead, the only hope is the ever-present but mockingly distant and unachievable blue of the sky. In the project for the Cemetery of San Cataldo, the metaphor not only derives from the typological explorations of Rossi's analogical drawings, but also emerges as a polemical statement drawn from postwar literature. ignaling the political exhau tion of modernism. Unlike Rossi's earlier projects or those which became more illu trative at the end of his career, the Cemetery of San Cataldo i both a political and architectural critique of modernism in which the ideas broached in Rossi's book The Architecture of the City ultimately take physical form in the partial realization of the cemetery.

Rossi's critique of modernism is located in the grim reality of postwar Italy and its mUltiple reactions to the fascist monumentality in a pects ~f Italian modernism. One such reaction took form in the escapist ae thetic

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of the neoliberty style, referring to Italy' ties to England in the late nineteenth century and adopting the name "Liberty" after the English manufacturer of Art N ou veau fabric . N eoliberty called for a return to patterned figuration evocative materiality. and a type of oftne to counter both the harshne of modernist ab traction and the 0 erblown imperial eale of Italian fasci m.

A econd reaction was rnanife t in Italian neoreali t film of the same period. Neoreali m i a term derived from literature and film and, when extended to arcrutecture, reflected the climate of the Italian Iiheration and it turn away from moderni t ab traction. A documentary attention to everyday life and an abundance of detail were among the mimetic technique u ed to produce the 'realistic" effects of neorealism. N eoreali m invoh"ed a double mimesis in architecture. For ~xample, the rebuilding of the Tiburtino district ~n Rome during the early 19501', produced building . that were new by neces ity but also needed t? resemble the product of hi storieal edimenta-

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;1. Studyfor the Segrate Monument; 1967.

marked by a no talgic quality. This wa countered by another form of realist thought which worked again t the grain of neoreali m' de criptive effects .. Ro i' concept of reali m depart from neoreali m' humanist value, a Pier Vittorio Aureli de cribe in di cussing the term of Ro i's "reali t education," and turn a new critical attention to what Ro icon idered to be the "fact " of the city. In his early work and writings, Ro i initiates a critique of the cenographic effect of neorealism by pointing toward a more structuralist notion of realism in architecture that i grounded in typological tudie. Ro i' critique of the modernist canon-of both the ab tractions of la:te moderni m and the monumentality of fa ci t Italy=could be considered mo t evident in hi drawing and hi important first book, The Architecture oftlw City, publi hed in 1966. The Cemetery of San Cataldo at Modena, and perhap to a similar degree his Gallaratese

f Ros i's hou ing complex, are among the few 0 .

realized building in thi period that integrate hi critique of ab traction with hi inter t in typology, analogy, and cale.

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Another critique of moderni m in architecture wa represented at the time by the magazine Casabeua, which under Ernesto Roger' direction, included many of Ro i's early article on Adolf Loos and Loui Kahn, a well a on moderni t buildings uch a Mie' eagram Building and Le Corbu ier's La Tourette. In addition to critical writings, Ro i' early work as an architect included hi participation in everal competitions. The most famous of these was the project for a regional government center in Turin, which eonsi ted of a giant four-sided quare, a mega-

bUilding on giant column pac d 100 meter

apart with a va t quare courtyard in the cent r, Ro i placed thi rna ive form outside of the city of Turin a a new kind of 0 er- ized civic mark r. In the Turin project, a well as in competition projects for monuments in uneo and Segrate, the juxtaposition of scales become an important theme. These early work also deploy pure geometrical form -circl ,i 0 cele triangles and

quare -which are extrud d to form cylindri-

cal hi

, eu ie, and triangular tructures. The cubic

form of hi Turin proj ct and th xtruded trian-

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gular form on a circular column for hi Segrate Monument to the Partisans exemplify his intere t in form reduced to their geometric archetypes. Such form would reappear in the Cemetery of San Cataldo competition in different gui es.

Ros i publi hed The Architecture of the City before any of hi work had been built, much like Robert Venturi' publication of Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, published the

arne year, before Venturi completed any major built work. Venturi and Rossi also hared an interest, new at the time and expre sed in theoretical po tulates, in de cribing the irreducibility of the city to any of moderni m's totalizing vision. Yet, where Venturi' populi t embrace of the city and its hallmark trip include its temporary sign age in the city' yrnbolic language, Ros i instead adopt an analytic method to isolate what he con idered the city' urban artefact . Such urban artefacts include elements of th city whose continuities. be they functional, such a hou ing, or symbolic, uch a monument , account for their perman nee within the history of the city. In Ros i's analysi ,the artefacts can

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al 0 be can idered cataly t for new buildings. Thi dialectic of permanence and growth define Ro i' understanding of the city a occupying different mom nt in time and ugge t that the urban artefact records diachronic moment and hi torie ..

A one of the book that wa critical in rethinking the relation hip of architecture and the city. Ro si' Tne Architectw'e of the City

hare 'orne ~imilaritie with Colin Rowe' book ~Qllage City, first puhli hed in 197 ,yet it i their differ.ence that are important. A fundamental pr~~e of Collage ity is that what exi ted-the building embodying the hi tory of architecture-had an intrin ie value and could be considered truthful as well as foundational. Rowe gave a value to origin . d h

.an t erefore any urban project

had to re pond to the e pre-exi ting or in Row' term u t '. ,e, , e plece" of the city. In Collage City

Rowe selected uch et piece lik '

, e a rotunda or a

6. ourtyard and tower, Fagnano, 1973. Detail.

quare or even a mega-building like the Hofburg in Vienna and in erted them into other contexts in a trategy that re embles Pirane i' Campo Marzio project. Rowe's idea of et piece, taken out of it original context and reinserted into a new conte t, linked eontextuali m to the idea of collage. Yet Rowe' and Pirane i's strategie differ in re pect to the value of origins. Wherea Rowe a ign an a priori value to what exi t and add tructures to reinforce this concept, Piran i as ign no value to the exi ting context and create et piece with no a priori context a a grounding idea. Rowe's method of collage reuse preexi ting m aningful fragment ,while Piranesi maintains the juxtaposition of elements without being beholden to an idea of th whole. Ro si's approach could b likened to that of Pirane i in term of r tailing a tension between urban ~lements, denying a ingular narrative, mearung, or origin. In t ad of et pieces, fragment , 01'

7. For Peter Eisenman, 1978. Detail.

collaged elements of the city, Ro i conceived of the city as an ensembl of typological element , whose imple geometrie could be read as the re uIt of removing their layer of hi torical accretion , The proces of reduction is identified in Ro i' typological analy is a the tudy of type of urban elements di tilled to their most imple geometric form. Thi produced geometric figure with a level of figuration unlike the ab tract entiti of modernism and unlike the contextual character of Rowe urban fragm nts. In thi operation, Ro i rethought the entire notion of typology developed in the nineteenth century by J,N,L. Durand a a serie of type condition for certain building . Ros i wa perhaps the first postwar architect to reintroduce the notion of typology in arehit cture, In attacking the tradition of typology related t functi n as well a ~o the formal, Ros i u ed typ a an analytical in trum nt with which to g nerate form as well

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a to generate a critique of modernist abstraction. He reintroduced in tead a typology which dealt not only with the problem of cale but al 0 with the problem of meaning. Ro si envi ioned typology as tandard elements that were scalele and only meaningful when understood in a particular conte t.

This idea of typology raised the is ue of repetition, uggesting that the city i: given form by a repetition of certain archetypal elements or urban artefact . The i sue of repetition was also important in minimall t culpture a a critique of narrative-the repeated erie lacks beginning, middle, and end-and a a critique of origin, as the individual 01' tarting unit is ub umed by other identical unit , The repetition of an urban artefact de tabilizes the relation hip between these el ment and their perceived ae thetic and functional va.lue as cultural icon . Ros i use iconic form but strips them of their i onicity through

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repetition, a t chnique that undermine th aura and uniquene of architectural element . When the e elemen ~ are taken out of their ae thebe and functional context, they c-an potentially be deployed as textual element . Their visual importance' undermined through repetition of archetypal elemen that have no fixed or determinate

cale. Ro i aehie e hift in cale in everal different . ay , in both drawing and building-for example, architectural element: uch a piloti. The image of the building on giant piloti i one that Ro i repea both in drawing and in buildings ueh a the Gallarate e hou fig project and

ub equently in the Modena cemetery.

Ros i drawings are al 0 a locu for hi critique of contextuali rn, Hi drawing, for example, register both the di location of place through the repetition of typological element , and the eli olution of caIe through the introduction of dome tic objects into the urban environment. In these drawings there are recurring formal theme : type based on Platonic forms are

calele ,placed in different context and thu e tranged from any cla ieal concept of a partto-whole unity; types drawn from dome tic environments are envisaged at architectural cales; the e objects of dome tic use, in their figured condition, capture Ro i's que tioning of cale related to typology. Ro si' urban artefacts could exist at any scale, in an interior a well a in a city cape, a i ugge ted in the drawing called Domestic Architecture. While the drawing ems to pre ent a table top with a cup, goblet and coffeepot in the center, all of which are hou ehold item , ~hen the top' removed from the pot, the dome tIC object become an architectural form that reappears as Ro si's Teatro del Mondo hi floating theater for the 1980 Venice Biennale.' His play with cale allow' the table, along with the fork and the spoon, to disappear into the city: the table top become the ground and the coffeepot becoma, a building. Other element , ' uch

9. Composition with plans, eleuatums, and sections, Cemetery of San Cataldo, Modena, 1971.

a lighthou or the giant figure of a aint, from the hill out ide of Turin, continue to defamiliarize the ense of a unitary urban cale. If a lighthou e i a coffeepot at one scale and a coffeepot is a lighthou e at an ther scale, Ro i ugge t that familiar objects have their own autonomou Condition in cribed in their type yet hi concept of typology remains re olutely open-ended.

On of Ro i' fir t building to deploy thi

hift of cale and repetition of element is hi Gallaratese hou ing project, who e colonnade is les a classical organization than it j a repetition of typical element. Gallarate e's heavy pilotis return in a number of drawings, and when juxtaposed with the coffeepot, the rnortar-and-pe tlelike elements enter Ro si' vocabulary as a mean of de cribing an trangernent through cale. Ro i' drawing al a combine a pect of the Modena project into new relationships with the city: Modena' conical shrine re embles an industrial tower and occupie the same landscape a an archetypal Tower of Babel. In Ros i' painting of the courtyard of Fagnano, Modena' quare cruciform window form the backdrop for an arcade remini cent of the Gallaratese hou ing block. Other drawings equate the punched-out quare window of Modena's cubic as uary to those of a house. It i when the e elements ar taken out of a real or built context that they become both analogic and textual, in that they do not conform to a ingle idea nor to any manife tation of reality. There i a play b tween the real and the ab tract, between the scale of object, and between the familiarity of obj ct which break down convention that are attached to meaning, ab traction, form, and scale. Drawing for Rossi are not intended as artwork, nor are th'ey exampies of metaphysical or surreal content like De Chirico's urban Iandscap s. While the deep hadow , black window, and whit urface of trueture within Rossi' drawing have De hirico- que characteristics, Ro si' dra,,~fig are analogie as well as textual; they are a Cl1-

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tique of architecture that cannot be made in the medium of architecture itself

The Cemetery of San Cataldo project focuses the energy of Ro si' drawings and the ideas in The Architecture of the City to render the cemetery a another type of city. In the drawing that Rossi submitted for his competition entry, th conception of the cemetery as a serie of part become clear: row of columbaria and objectlike 0 suari s a e the locu for the symbolic burning of the bodies. The "town quare" occupying the center of the cemetery house the artefacts culled from the interchangeably urban and domestic realms: the conical shrine recall the cof£ epot as well the indu trial tower, and the columbaria and 0 uarie bl nd the typologie of hou e and memorial. Ro i' cemetery alo d

raw on Enlightenment model ueh a

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funerary monument, yet tran po e the themes of life and death through the symbol of the hOll e. In the project's columbaria block , Ro si maintains the formal condition of the house through the u e of a pitched roof and windows, yet strips the windows of the elemen -the frames, mullion ,and glass-which signify occupation. As an emptied opening, the window of the columbaria in tead register absence.

Ro i' project for the emetery of San

ataldo engages a pect of it conte t without re orting to a contextualist strategy, yet plays off of its po ition as an addition to a cemetery complex compri ing a small Jewish ce~~tery and the exi ting Co ta cemetery. The eXlstmg cemeterie -the campo santo (hol; ground)-31'e traditionally enclo eel by an e ternal wall. ,~ne of Ro i' deci ion involved u ing a wall to join the

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10. Cemetery of an Cataldo, columbarium exterior. horizontal axe of the traditional Roman town, which grid the cemetery eomple . The plan of Roo i' cemetery project can be read as a diptyeh with the exi ting Co ta cemetery, and bears both

ymmetrieal and asymmetrical relationship to thi context, aligning and lipping out of alignment with different portions of the plan. While Ro i' plan al 0 res pond in i geometric order to the Jewish cemetery, its multiple mi alignments further disrupt the classic idea of a part-to-whole relationship. AJtematively, the cemetery project can be een to take the theme of the enelo ure of figured objects from Le Corbu ier' Mundaneurn project. Yet Ro i' plan rethinks Le Corbu ier' utopian ge ture within the context of a more problematic relationship of drawing to building.

The competition drawings of the Modena cemetery depict the ynunetricaJ axi with an entrance arcade leading to the cubic 0 mary the G- haped columbaria leading down a central'axis to. the ~On:ical brine, and the enclo ing tT'Ucture wtth PItched roof -many of which can be con id-

ered traditional Ro ian elemen4-- 'I'h .

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pear within the context of the cemetery project

but have nothing to do with religiou ymbol,

11. emeteru of an ataldo, columbarium interior,

i m, and in tead become urban ecular ymbols brought into a acted burial ground. The confu-

ion of symbol between the sacred and profane is part ofthe textual nature ofthe project. The context of the idea of Le orbusier' plan as generator i called into que tion a Ro i puts both ectional and per pectival elevations into the plan; the e, too, become typological element deployed without cale and without the conte t of a ingle place or time.

Another relationship presented at Ros i's

emetery of San Cataldo relate to scale, both of the city and of the individual building. Thi critique is propo ed through a single element: the window. Le orbusier suggest d that when a window i too large or too small for a rOOIDthat i , when it i not the right size-th none is in the pre ence of architecture, Therefore an excess in the relation hip signifie architecture as an exce s in relationship to the functionality of the object. Ro si's trategy differ lightly from Le Corbu ier' and i more akin to that in Adolf Loos's hou e project , in which the exterior of the hou wa concei ed as differ nt and separat from the interior. The facade in Loos' ca e

12. Cemetery of San Cataldo, 'niches, ossuary.

was a double- ided membrane that articulated the urban scale of the city on one side and the domestic scale of the house on the other. Ro i al 0 developed a similar trategy at Gallaratese, where the standard quare window is sized in relation hip to the scale of the quare out ide rather than for the room within, for which it is too large, This di tortion of cale indicate that the room can be read as having been tacked onto the facade of the quare. Thu the actual facade plane of the building is not to be read a the exterior of a bUilding, but rather a the exterior facade enclo ure of the public pace. Thi play of cale articulates an id a about a di junction in the relationship between facade-part and public paceWhole in terms of the city.

The punched quare window opening that reappear in the Modena c metery similarly question the relationship of part-to-whole. The window functions as both the outside and inside of urban scale: the exterior cale of the window differ from that of it interior from which one can read the slightly maller frame of the e te- 1101' window, The legible change in dimension betwe n inner and outer window i poignant, in

13. Cemeieru of San Cataldo, columborium:

that the waU thiekne s hou es the quare slots for urn . Moreover, the dim en ion ofthe e square spaces is related to that of the window, a relation-

hip reiterated by windows with a cruciform subdivi ion. The multiple cales at which the square operate are legible a a honeycombed effect, with the quare window a an in ert, reproducing the window at many different scale. The window become the register of everal repetition: that of the quare form, and that of the cruciform subdivi ion. Ro si also introduce an uncanny effect produced by other typologie -for example, that of the Tu can farmhou e, with tucco urfaces, column , and pitched roof. The quare opening punched into the wall i a traditional type of window, y t in this context the windov become a regi ter of a pace of ab ence and emptiness.

Modena is important a much for it drawing a it is for the building, even though it wa never built or completed a drawn. Many of the

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drawing are partia p an V1

tened, one-point perspective view, imilar to,,3 cubi t till life. Only the heavy outlin of ROS~l s drawing atte t to anoth r en Jbility TI~e drawings are diagrams and the building , In many

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cases are built a illu trations of the drawings. For example, the plan, ection, and ele ation are all deployed in a flattened treatment in the drawing. The hadow become important a the ole indicator of reli f. Whether the architecture of the emetery of San Cataldo re onate in the

arne wa as the drawing is an i ue in much of Ro i' work. A in the work of John Hejduk or Daniel Libe kind, or per hap even Palladio who redrew all ofhi buildings late in life, it i po ible to say that building i a repre entation of an idea first propo ed in a drawing. It could be argued that the portion of the Cemetery of San Cataldo that was built is not as deeply e ocative of the ideas that exi t in the drawings of the cemetery. Certain of Ro j drawings for the cemetery depict the ground plane becoming a kylight, a if de cribing an interchangeability of ground and

ky, of plan and window. In thi ense, Rc i' title "The Blue of the Sky" peak of a. condition in which the aeredness of the ground has di appeared-dis olved in orne en e-into the va t emptines of the kyo

Modena' phy ieal building are pow rfuJ in their au terity and reticence; their primitive tructural y terns and cruciform window ,

et within the wall of square burial niche , can be een a a UlTImation of a Ro ian trope: the frame within the frame within the frame. The interrelatedne of the e frame' i textual as o,ppo ed to visual in nature, playing on as ociatiom related to typology and analOgical forms. The ~odena project, especially the drawings, also point toward the development of what Ro i would call, hi Citto. analoga or Analogous City of 1976. In hi e ay, "L'architettura analoga," Ro si draw~ on J ung' notion of analogical thought as

archaic, un eonsct au " and practically in e '

'bl ' XPl ess- 1 e In word , a counterpoint to rationalist logic

If analogou' thought for Ro i is an inteno; monologue, then it also offer the po 'ibilit f under tanding architecture as the product ~f °a

Cemsr I'Y of San Cataldo

proce ofr asoning from parallel ca e . The analogical method attempts to under tand the city from it urban artefacts, which are elements from different place and different time , and thereby remove architecture from a hi torical form of logic to another condition of logic, which could be con ide red textual, Ros i aid that to understand his drawing it i neces ary to read the text of The Architecture of the City. Th drawing of the analogous citie contain the primary elements, the monument, the pecial plac S (01' loci) imilar to the written ideas presented in his text. Drawings then become another mean of architectural thought, not illu trations of or metaphor for architecture. The movement from Modena' competition drawings to it built component and ub equently to the Citta analaga drawing

ugg t that the relationship from drawn idea to built form i recur ive, and ultimately textual, thus undecidable .. Its most important moment is in the Modena cemet ry, a work that can be een as ited between drawing and building.

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15. The organization of Rossi's Cffll.etery of Sa» ~ata1do re ponds to an e;cisting cemetery complex III Modena. The original sif£ plan is important in the conte:! of questioning part-tv-whole relatwnsllips. Ros.'51.s ~metery can be seen as a diptych with the pree:mtmg Costa cemetery (on the right-luLnd side); these two cemeteries flank the smaller J ewi.~h cemetery, I1'h tell function» cs a hinge. While the areas within the u'a1led enclo. ure~ of Rosgi's San Cataldo and the Costo celnetery are roughly the same size, Ro« j's Sa~1 ~ataldo tablishe« a distinct differ ru:.efrom the erntlUg cemete-rll!s. While Rossi's San Cataldo project beclJ1'l'Ies part of an entire cemeter» complex it

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Rossi's San Cataldo cemetery is gridded by vertical and horizontal axes, which recall the cardo and deeumamu« of the traditional Roman city_ There is an impression of symm,e,try about the hinge of the Jm.uish cemetery centered between the San Cataldo and Cost-a cemeteries. This symm,e,try is reiterated in the symmetry of the Ros '1' s heme, whieh has a centra.l axis with square, pyramid, and conical 'trnctu re in ite center. Yet the organization of Ros i'8 p,'oject can also be read as bi-nuclear about two main volum.es (the cube and the wne), producing a constant play between symmetry and asymmetry. The project's By7n1'Yt£try and 'use of Platonic forms recalls the Italian ideal cities, as well as cemeteries by LedoUX and funera?"y monuments by Boullee and Fischer VO'l"l

u sest Erlach: The project can thus be seen a a pa imp .

of Roman town, neoclassical frameioork, and utaPt~n modernist schemes like that proposed.for example, t11 Le orbw~ier'8 Mundaneum project.

Cemetery of an atalrlo

191

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16. Rossi's Cemetery of an aiaido project is alig1l.€d along the top and bottom with the Jewish cemetery, yet ?Wt with the dinwnsion.s oj the top and bottom of the Costa Cetnetery. The central axis ofthe osta cemetenJ, which is the dominant cross-axial circulation of the plans, aUgn through the Jeioi -11, cem terry with the major cross axis of the Ro,~si project, an asi» not

located in th center o/the interior space of tiu: Rossi project, but which rlms across the bottom third a/the internal divisions. The m idpoim a/the Costa cemetery articulo: s, both vertically and horizontally, W/Ult call be vi wed as eight squares gridding the eemeien; space (the four central spaces being true squares, the Jaw' peripli rat spaces being l s than 'quare ).

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f, 17. Ro sis project for the Cemetery of San Cataldo app ars to be a complete rectilinear encio ure. More specifically, it is articulated as a flattened three-sided V-shape with a top element distinguis'~d from the V-shape with smel! gaps between the fJ-u.ilding blocks. This erterior V-shape is then repeated in th~ interior of the space as the single scaffold organizing each of the symbolic elements along the central ax-is. This re~titi~1l of the outer U-shape and an inner U-shape mamt,(w1.S a tension between elerrumts.

The exterior rectangular block recalls the Siedlung (hou ing blocks) by Ludwig Hilberseimer, which have no ide-ntifia.ble front or back, as each side i identical. Rossi confounds the idea of the Siedlung by adding a pitched roof, which effectively mixes different typologies in combining different characteristics from differe1~t mornents in time. The questioning initiated by buildings at different scales challenges conventional typologie and preu nts a single reading of the obj ct.

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18. In the Cemetery of San Cataldo the voided rube, while r mmiscen» of the voided cube of Rossi's Turin project, also bears a relationsh1'p to his Cuneo monument and serves a similar function as a monuTn..ent to WQ,?' dead. Rossi also describes the voided cube as an abandoned house, lacking functional windows and a toof

The quare and cube ar repeated at various scales throughout the project. from the large cale of the tmilding to the individual scales of the oss-uaries and the smaller scale of the squares of the cruciform. windows. Rossi is cleal'ly interested in the restoration of figure, bu: one of am biguO'us scale and junction.

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20. emetery of San Cataldo ossuari and columbaria; a.conOmetric vieio.

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21. Cemetery of an Cataldo, coiumbaria and a.·sunrll entrq sequence.

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